


he's got what it doesn't take

by cerebella



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Time Fuckery, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5906236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebella/pseuds/cerebella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is over a year old and not proof-read because it is 2:30am and i am so exhausted and sick</p><p>annie asked why this was originally tagged spy/scout and the answer to this is sleepy writer! also if you want to ask questions about the plot that is cool but the answer is something along the lines of 'you're right that's pretty fucked up'</p></blockquote>





	he's got what it doesn't take

 

"Can you hold her?"

Spy takes the sleeping one in his arms without a word, watching the distressed woman in front of him carefully. She seems so lost.

"I'm real sorry, I just need a few–-a few moments."

"Of course."

"You're a lifesaver," the woman gasps, eyes screwed shut. Her eyelashes are tangled up in almost-tears and mascara. Spy had always thought his mother was frail, but now he can't blame her. He can't hold the creature in his arms for much longer. His hands are burning against her skin, she'll start to cry at some point. Years of gun oil have slicked up his gloves: children shouldn't be held in hands that have killed men. And yet the young one doesn't seem to mind. Her eyes are closed, her hands crossed over her heart. Maybe she's praying to God that he'll go away. In this instance, he is a prophet and he can make he wish come true. (She should keep her faith a little longer, that way.)

"Will you be alright?" Spy asks tentatively.

"I'm sorry," her voice cracks. "I ain't think she's yours or nothin'. I--I don't know. Her daddy ain't here. I don't know what to do." And she starts cry again, hiccuping and shaking with a hand over her mouth.

There's an anxiety pooling in the back of his head, but he ignores it. These girls need strength, and he won't be here for much longer. There must be somewhere he has to be, somewhere far away.

"It's almost been a year. I can't believe this. I got a baby girl. I got myself a baby girl, Alex," she grins up at him, a handkerchief between her fingers, tears rolling down her face.

"Does she have a name?"

Spy looks down: still sleeping, even with all the heartbreak around her. She doesn't look like she has a name yet.

"I was thinkin' Jenny. You know, after my Ma. Does she look like a Jenny to you?" She asks nervously.

He ponders it for a moment. Yes, she looks like she could be a Jenny. "She looks beautiful."

 

 

He can remember the wails, and the fading light of a marmalade sunset blasting through the windows, and the farmer's wife across the road gripping his forearm tight, with a real, human smile on her face as the last few pushes gave way and then there was a _baby_.

 

 

"Spy?"

Miss Pauling takes a deep breath, and steps back. She has a faraway look in her eyes. She's not hurt, but she's certainly... unsettled. "You can't have a child in your sole custody for the duration of this contract," she says finally, gazing down at her clipboard.

And Spy does not deserve to hate her, of course, but he does.

 

 

"She looks like an angel." An old voice croons somewhere on the shuttle.

Spy does not look for the voice, only watches a child in his arms with a stark silence. He does not issue any reply, wiping the little girl's forehead with an afraid gingerness, holding her closer to him. (The lights are flickering as the train rushes through a tunnel.)

When he's walking from the stop, he carries her upright against his shoulder. She does not know anything about where she came from, but she is not ready for where she is going.

It's a cold day in the metropolis, snow brushing his every step, and the wind is stinging his eyes. She seems perfectly content in the cutting cold. He wishes he felt the same way. He hasn't worn gloves in months, not since his last contract ended, and he's starting to suffer the consequences.

In another world, he'd be almost happy to hold her. But there is blood on his hands that she can never see, and if he's not careful, time will lend her the same bloodlust it did him. He can't have that. He won't.

 

 

"Can you hold her?"

A stranger with a five o'clock shadow, a long jaw, and a pair of sunset-yellow glasses gives him a wary look before taking Jenny into his arms. He looks confused. Of course he is. He does not know who Spy is, and there he stands outside the bar, patiently waiting for whatever is about to happen. Spy gives the girl a lost look, gazing down quietly before wetting his lips. She looks so sad in the yellow light of a streetlamp, and he almost can't bear to look at her.

His head hurts with the shouts from a man who does not even know his name, his head hurts when he knows he won't turn back, and when he's a thousand miles away his head still hurts, for God's sake. It's the lord's headache and it's in his own head, but he's far from divine.

He remembers his heart in his throat, and when it stopped beating because she started crying and, oh, how had he never seen her cry before? Children always cry, all the time, didn't they? From the moment they're born to the day they die, long after you had said goodbye for the very last time, and yet she'd never, ever cried.

 

 

What does he do? What are you supposed to do? He'd run after the man, he'd yelled and screamed and called him cruel things, but the child was still there.

He wasn't allowed to ask for help. When half the city hates you and the other half thinks you're dead, you can't go to the station. He knows what it's like to hate your father, rue your mother--he knows what it's like to spend, to _waste_  years of your life looking for your family. Maybe not having family runs in the family. What kind of sickness is that?

" _Can you hold her?_ " The man had asked. He does. He holds her. For hours, even, in the dark after crossing the road from the pub to escape the smell of putrid beer and bad decisions. He wishes he could say that the man even looked familiar. There was a mask, and stark blue eyes. Now there's a child: she hasn't opened her eyes. He doesn't want to wake her, in case hers are the same.

Still, it feels like the decision has already been made for him: he won't be the same. He won't leave a child in the dark. It's something else to board a cab with a sleeping child in your arm, when you're half drunk and half stone-cold sober, particularly when you arrived only hours before with a man and a woman on each arm. He takes a girl home and he doesn't know her name, but she stays for a very long time.

 

 

It's not like she needs a name, at first. But Lawrence's contract will start in a few months. And you can't bring a baby to a battlefield.

She needs a good name, to make up for the days she went without one. ( _Did_ she have a name? It occurs to him there was a very, very short period of time where maybe she had one.) He has a book of names, somewhere, and he spends several hours sitting with her on the porch, reading them aloud. She's asleep. She's always sleep. Is something wrong with her? God, he couldn't take that. He can't let her die. It's a miracle she's alive in the first place. She's only ever been looked after by madmen.

 _Marveille_. The name doesn't suit him, but it suits her. And Marv to him, for short. Marv sounds like a family in his mouth, in his head, in his arms.

She doesn't need a middle name right now. He'll leave that to someone else. As a courtesy.

 

 

Marv drinks formula. She sleeps in his bed. He blends apples and honey and milk and mixes them in a bowl, but he never gives it to her. He knows nothing about children: what if it hurts her? What if she's allergic? There's not a doctor for miles in the outback. He can't risk it. Even if she never does seem happy to drink the store-bought formula he buys in bulk, he can never bring himself to do it.

He doesn't dare light a cigarette around her. When she's asleep and he can feel the world crushing down onto his back in big, rocky boulders, he'll step onto the patio and lean over the fence with sweat running down his back. With shaky fingers he'll light something hand-rolled and smoke up to the sour brown, burning his fingers. It seems too cruel to the child to smoke, so sometimes he lies in bed and burns and aches until the sun rises and there's something to do.

But sometimes he does this: he stands in the yard with grass up to his knees, and smokes a cigarette. Marv sleeps. The world does what it always does. His breath is hot and thick and honeyed, the rough, greasy pads of his fingers brush against his stubble, and he stares blankly into the red and sore horizon. And then he goes back inside.

 

 

His contract gets closer every day, and he still hasn't done anything about the kid. She's getting bigger, and she even opens her eyes sometimes. How long has he had her now? Two weeks? Three? He doesn't know, exactly, how old she is. She can move her neck a little, sometimes lifting it up to smile and coo and mumble. But those are early developments. Marv might have already spent more time with him than she has anyone else. That's scary to him. That's deafening. Lawrence holds her, and regrets himself. No matter how many books he reads, he never seems to know quite what to do. He wishes he had someone else: he wishes _Marveille_  had someone else.

It's six or seven feeds a day of formula milk, and by now the kid at the gas station four miles down the road seems to have figured these days he has company.

"Man, where'd this baby even come from? You found a chick out here, that's ridiculous," the cashier says as he bounces her gently in his arms. Surprisingly adept, considering his rough-edged, all-american manner.

"Careful."

"I know what I'm doin', relax, right?" (It does feel that way.) "Kids always comin' over, y'know, sleepin' in my bed 'n all. I didn't mind it too much, I guess. Hey, ya don't seem too hot about the kid, why don't you lemme give you some advice? Stop freakin' out on her, for Christ's sake."

 _James_. That's what it says on the name tag. It makes him angry that a freckled-and-spotted kid working the gas station in the middle of nowhere is carrying his child (his child?) and telling him what to do with it. When's Marv gonna get a real adult taking care of her? Maybe James is the closest thing he'll get. He can't spring a baby on a teenager on minimum wage, but he'll take all the help he can get. Besides: James is offering.

"You need to _talk_  to her," James narrows his eyes, flicking something off of Marv's nose. "Seriously. How many words a day is she gettin'? She's quiet, man, real quiet, s'not good for her. I get you've got this whole brooding thing goin' on, but when she gets older she's gotta know how to communicate."

Lawrence nods.

"This is what I'm talkin' about, man! Even just babbling, ask her questions, read her stories. You have to speak up, brother."

"James."

"Yeah?"

"Give me my baby."

 

 

He's not sure how it happens, but at some point James starts coming home with him. Lawrence isn't sure exactly how to treat guests, especially guests that jump in the passenger seat where his four-or-five-or-six-month-old is sleeping. Lucky for him, James isn't much of a gentleman either, and tends to help himself to whatever's in the fridge, until he realizes there's never much in there except dried rations and sunflower seeds.

"I brought burgers. And uh, I got good news for ya, too." James says one day, sliding past him. He looks around until he spots Marv, sleeping like an angel on Lawrence's armchair, picking the dozing creature up in his arms before sitting himself down with the child in his lap. "My pal says he's try'na pawn off some old cribs and stuff from the family. You think small fry wants to make the move to her own crib?"

Lawrence's back hurts from sleeping on the floor. He's heard stories about parents rolling over in the night and squashing the kids, so now his spine's bruised up, and it hurts like all hell. A crib wouldn't hurt. Really. "How much?"

"Just two-fifty. And we can drive down to the city and pick it up in that nice ass van of yours," James grins.

"Yeah. Alright, sounds like a plan."

 

 

His contract looms over him like the sun over the equator, and he still gets night sweats. Marv sleeps in a crib now, with one of his two pillows and the other half of a blanket he ripped in two. Pauling, _damnable_  Amy Pauling and her absolutely immaculate signature, and all those awful telegrams she keeps sending. How the hell does she even know where he lives? He ruffles his hair and rubs his eyes, and cracks all the joints in his toes and fingers. Marv laughs when he does. He narrows his eyes at her, but she can't see, lucky thing. He wonders about talking to her. It feels so strange to suddenly come home from the store and pick her up and know he has to say something.

He's still trying.

"Good morning, baby," he grunts, scooping her up out of the crib with a coffee in his free hand. She makes a particularly unladylike groan and screws her eyes shut.

"Blimey, all right, go back to bed. Sorry," he mumbles apologetically. He'll try again later.

 

 

"Marveille," Lawrence says slowly. His face is hot. Because the sun is out, and not because he's trying to talk to this kid without sounding like a... like a parent, maybe. "Marv."

Marv twists her head and wriggles around, babbling _yerghs_  and _yeghz_. Marv likes 'Y'.

"Ye-ya."

"Good stuff," Mundy sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. What a goofball kid. He takes a deep breath, and looks down at her. Pressing his forehead to hers, in a moment of exceptional affection, he remembers her eyes are blue. He thinks about the masked stranger every day, remembers their cologne and a couple of glimpses of false teeth. Not the eyes. He can't remember the eyes.

"Mubby," Marv makes two fists and scrunches them up in his sideburns.

"Oi!" Lawrence flinches back. "You little piker, see if I care so much about you now."

Well, Marv sees right through that one and starts laughing. Maybe the heat is getting to her. That, or she's getting bored of his moping. James would be delighted to see she's started making fun of him. James has cornflower blue eyes, just like Marv. In fact, the shades must be closer than he's ever noticed. He'll take a look the next time the kid comes over.

 

 

James is fucking furious the next time he comes over.

"You don't get to leave your own kid in the middle of fucking nowhere to die, you piece of _shit_ ," he spits.

"It's not my kid," Lawrence growls.

"The fuck she ain't your kid. You look after her, you feed her, she lives in your house--"

"What're you tryna say?"

"She's gonna remember you, you fucking asshole! She knows your name! She's your little girl!"

Lawrence throws a pathetic right hook: even James knows he can do better. He grumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets as James recovers, wiping spit from his mouth. James barely even flinched. Guess he knows how to hold his own. All those brothers, maybe. "I have a contract. I wouldn't just leave her to die–I, uh, got a lady who says I can pay some fees."

"Take her out of your hands, right? Fuck you," James growls.

"What's it matter to you? You think I'll let you keep her? She'll grow a beard before you do!" (It's a cheap insult.)

James slackens his shoulders, looking around. Marv is sleeping in the other room. He cranes his neck to try and peer through the door. "Gimme her," he mumbles.

"Piss off."

"Sir, you gimme that fuckin' kid, right now, you don't know what the hell you're doin'–"

James tries to side-step him, sweating profusely, face beginning to redden. (Those eyes really are cornflower blue, just like baby's.) The kid's cursing incoherently, fisting his fingers in Lawrence's shirt. Honestly, Lawrence is losing his touch, because he's already a wreck and this kid is toeing him into the ground like a cigarette stub. He barely has time to pull himself together before grabbing the kid's neck and slamming his head against the wall. An empty picture frame clatters to the floor. Lawrence wants to strangle him, but he settles for pinning him against the wall, with an elbow in his stomach. James can't breathe but this dumbass kid is still shouting, trying to lift his fists. Fucking christ, his head.

"You'll wake my kid," he hisses, clamping a hand against the kid's mouth.

James' eyes soften, and he stops struggling. Lawrence doesn't move. Marv's awake, either way. Lawrence wants to go in and comfort her, hush her and kiss her and let her sit outside on his lap while he talks quietly to her about wild animals and all the constellations he's seen during the darker days. Instead he's got another kid crying shoved up against the wall, red-eyed and breathing hard.

"She's cryin'," James murmurs through Lawrence's hand. "Lemme see her."

Lawrence lets the moment pass while the tension simmers down. "Just be quiet."

James huffs, derisive. Lawrence feels a twinge of guilt. Marv is bawling when they walk in. James sighs and scoops her up gently, mumbling and cooing to her. He's still shaking and broken up, but he wipes his eyes and he wipes hers too. Same eyes. Lawrence would never give him the kid, not in a million fucking years, you don't bounce children around like that. Kids don't take care of kids. It doesn't work like that.

"Listen," Lawrence starts. James stiffens. He wills himself to not care. "You know this isn't right. I'm not a dad, for–for cryin' out loud, you ain't either. I didn't even want her-–"

"–-Shut the fuck up," James growls, turning his head.

"For the love of–some stranger on the street throws a cryin' little girl at you, you don't get to keep her! It doesn't turn out right! I know more than I think you bloody reckon! You have no idea, you got your mum and your...brothers," Lawrence trails off. He can draw a line. James was drunk, and Lawrence just happened to be there. He wasn't supposed to know.

They were careful about the language in front of Marv, kept it behind closed doors, and even then the profanity was difficult to muster with a child nearby. But who cares, really? She can't possibly know what they're saying.

"You're a fuckin' loser. You think your company is so great, but I'm just here 'cause I knew from the moment you walked in with that kid, you'd mess with her somehow," James says derisively, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

Lawrence doesn't even know what to say to that.

"I talk to her all the time, and you're too busy try'na look cool, like it ain't screwin' with your kid's development. Christ. Throw her away. She'll be better with anyone else." James wipes snot off on his shirt, sniffling while Marv rests her quiet head on his chest. The dilemma is tangible now, and Lawrence feels the most foreign desire to settle his chin in the crook of James' neck and sigh. He lingers on that thought, and then pushes it aside. James is shaking all over, wary and tired out. Lawrence wants to lie him down and then sit in the rocking chair on the front porch. There is an abscess in his gut, swelling and burning, a hard infection that has tired him out for years. It appears that there some problems you can only treat with more pain. It appears that this has been the human condition for a long, long time.

He brushes gently past James and lies face-up on the bed, gazing out the window. The sky has turned red, again. He wonders why the sky is never cornflower blue.

 

 

In the late afternoon with his own glossy drool dripping between his fingers, over his sticky lips, James wrenches open his eyes. He can hear the long grass blowing in the wind, and the crickets going at it, and the owls' hooting, and the snakes slithering, but he can't hear a sunbaked man or his baby. _Tell me they didn't skip town_ , he thinks, rising up like a zombie, shot up with worry. The nervous tremor has returned from yesterday afternoon, the one he picked up in a public school bathroom.

He sees Marv sound asleep in her crib. The panic remains: holy shit, Lawrence was right, he can't take care of that thing. James wipes the sweat and saliva off of his hands, and picks her up. He doesn't want to leave her in the room alone. (He doesn't want to leave this room on his own.) He finds Lawrence asleep on his rocking cheers, legs and arms crossed, head tipped downwards. Everything about him screams _closed off, come back later_. James gets right up in his face and Marv begins to bawl. She's sleepy. Lawrence wakes with a start, tipping back his head, locking his limbs even tighter together. He looks up at James like he's an angel, with an uncharacteristic and untimely grin on his face. James pulls back, face hot. He hadn't meant for that. Sort of. He'd mostly wanted to get a good look at Lawrence's face, while it wasn't on lock down with a cigarette in his mouth. Lawrence looks just as mean when he's sleeping; James is disappointed.

There is a pregnant pause before Lawrence speaks up, cutting off James' cough. Lawrence's eyes are blazing in front of him, his brows narrowed in the face of the glaring sun behind James.

"There's a woman from Arizona and her name is Amy Pauling." Lawrence croaks.

"So you're dropping the kid 'cause you got your own lady."

"I don't have a lady." Lawrence looks affronted, and then uncomfortable.

"Who's Amy Pauling?" James frowns. Marv hums.

"My boss. I don't–I don't have a lady."

James cocks an eyebrow. "You have to stay. You know you have to stay."

Lawrence closes his eyes. "I don't know anything these days."

 

 

In the Badlands, they are one red man short of a winning team. Pauling shakes her head and mumbles too close to her walkie-talkie, staining the transmitter with eggplant lipstick. Her heels are cracked in three different places. Her mouth tastes like absinthe and gun metal. There are always replacements, but she's known Sniper for over ten years. She can feel the eyes of the BLU Scout burning on her waistline from where he is perched in a bird's nest in the watchtower. She almost expected a goodbye, but she's made worse mistakes.

 

 

"Don't you ever want to go home?" Lawrence watches James, whose face and bare chest are lit up by the blue light of the fridge. It's the middle of the night.

"I've been working that gas station for years."

"How long?" Lawrence shuts the bedroom door softly behind him, and sits himself down on a rickety chair by the dining table.

James snags a root-beer. "I haven't talked to the manager in years."

"Why not?"

"I shot him." James says curtly.

Lawrence nods slowly, dragging his fingers across the table like it's coated in treacle. He looks up at James, at those now searing cornflower blue eyes. They aren't the same color as Marv's anymore.

"Haven't been payed in years. I re-stock from the city every few months. Not like I can sell it. There's blood all over the plot papers."

Lawrence furrows his brows. "How fucking old are you?"

"Skin and bones and all? Seventeen. You work long jobs and everything stays the same for a lot longer. And you end up thirty-three and you haven't even grown any facial hair." James snorts derisively. "You spend twenty years in the Badlands and you have nothing to show for it, fuckin' nothin' at all, except a bunch of cash you only get to blow on an empty gas station in the middle of nowhere."

 

 

Lawrence keeps glancing at the road while James lies in the grass besides him. He's two weeks late for his contract, and he's received no more telegraphs. Maybe Pauling has finally given up on him. (He should write. No, he shouldn't, she'd just be irritated. She has work to do. She always has work to do.) She's worked that job for decades without interruption. She won't go out of her way for just one sharpshooter. James rests his head on his hands, staring at the stars, breathing softly. Clearly, he doesn't mind the dirt or the dragonflies hovering over his face.

"Quit it, guy. Your lady's not coming." James doesn't even sound irritable. Lawrence feels guilty.

"I don't have a lady."

"How come you never had a lady, tough guy?" James asks quietly.

"How come you never quit asking?" Lawrence snaps, rolling his eyes in an uncharacteristic display of petulance, and normally they'd laugh. But James gives him that look, when James remembers he still knows almost nothing about Lawrence.

 

 

"Marv just passed out. Had to sing her a lullaby and shit. Absolutely fuckin' knocked out, that kid. We got some time to ourselves." James grins. Lawrence glares at him.

"What are you looking at me like that for? Not a married couple, you bloody freeloader. Where's my rent?"

James flushes raspberry red, and elbows him against the counter. "Fuck off!" He laughs. Lawrence turns to the frying pan still irritated, pointing a finger in James' face with his free hand. James leans forward to bite it and Lawrence flinches, turning his head to grumble profanities under his breath. "Sorry, Law," James murmurs, lips rubbing against the pads of Lawrence's fingers. Lawrence looks pissed, and truth be told, James was always more of a lover than a fighter. He takes hold of Lawrence's hand and presses a cool kiss to his wrist, pulling Lawrence forward. There's nothing to be said. James takes a couple of fingers into his mouth and wishes they were sitting down, wishes he was in someone's lap, and his stomach curls in on itself and he begins to drool. For once he's glad he's not actually thirty-three–or at least the body of an older guy, because that's no fun, he still wants to drag his teeth along Lawrence's hand and feel something happening, he still wants to feel like one of the boys in those smokey bars where his brothers used to hang out. He runs his tongue along the seam of Lawrence's fingers until it's pulled out of his mouth, and not by him, because Lawrence has a hand slipping under his shirt and there are wet fingers on the back of his neck tugging him forward.

Maybe it's been a while, maybe it's been a shared forty years between them, but James takes hold of either side of Lawrence's chest and slots his finger in between his ribs, only to plant a kiss on an open mouth before he gets shuffled backwards, and Lawrence has him pinned against the dining table. "Shit," James coughs. "Shit, what about Marv, what if–"

"She's can't fucking _walk_ , you wanker."

"You're right. Shut me up, tough guy?" James grins before Lawrence dives down to kiss him, fingers slipping around under his shirt, and James lets out a small whine, looking for something to hold on to before he wraps his arms around Lawrence's neck and sighs when Lawrence pushes his hips forward. But there's no relief, and James would shake but can't, really, because he's pinned down and his hips stutter upwards in an effort to find some relief. Maybe this guy can't take a hint.

James hikes up his legs and Lawrence shoves him further onto the table, pressing kisses to his jaw and then his neck while he hooks James' legs around his waist. Lawrence collapses slightly when James start threading fingers through his hair, and James hums and moans and shakes until there's a dampness in his boxers and something is smeared all over the inside of his thighs. He doesn't notice anything until Lawrence props his elbows up on either side of his torso, looking down at him pensively.

"What's the face for?" James snaps.

"You really do have the body of a fucking sixteen-year-old."

"I _hate_ you, man, I can't believe this, you didn't even touch my dick and I creamed myself, I'm gonna fuckin' die, I swear–"

Lawrence starts laughing. James pushes Lawrence off, and wipes the sweat off of his chest.

 

 

Lawrence meets one man with cornflower blue eyes at a baseball game, almost fifteen years later. The man smells like smoke and vanilla, and he has a grinning woman on his arm and his son on the other. James speaks up before he does. "That your kid?"

"Of course." The man looks up at the pair of them.

"My kid's on the pitch."

He turns around. "She looks healthy."

"She is."

He smiles. "You have a beautiful child."

"Damn right."

"You're very lucky to have her."

Lawrence nods, and the conversation is over.

**Author's Note:**

> this is over a year old and not proof-read because it is 2:30am and i am so exhausted and sick
> 
> annie asked why this was originally tagged spy/scout and the answer to this is sleepy writer! also if you want to ask questions about the plot that is cool but the answer is something along the lines of 'you're right that's pretty fucked up'


End file.
